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Melvyl Transitions

June 26, 2003 Author: CDLCategories:

a. Melvyl-T: User Action Required

The CDL sent out the information below via Users Council and CDLINFO.  This topic appears to be one of interest to our users, since we continue to hear questions about these services from end-users.  Please help us get the word out by sharing this information with public service staff and others who have contact with Melvyl catalog users. Thank you.

CDL Profile: You will not be able to automatically transfer your existing Profile from the legacy Melvyl Catalog/Periodicals Titles databases to Melvyl-T.  You will need to set up a new Profile in Melvyl-T by clicking the ‘Sign In (optional)’ link at the top of the web page and following the instructions.  The “Sign In” link changes to a “My Workspace” link after you register and sign in; this is where you can make changes to your information, etc.

Note – Not all of the Profile information (such as your PIN number for Request, timeout settings, etc.) that was retained in the legacy system is retained in Melvyl-T because of privacy concerns and system architecture.

Saved Lists & Search History: Records saved into Lists in the legacy Melvyl Catalog/Periodicals Titles databases cannot be automatically transferred to Melvyl-T. If you wish to save this information you will need to do the following in order to retain it:

Print, Email, or Download this information (Saved Lists)
Print or “cut-and-paste” this information into a text editor (Search History

Beginning June 17, 2003, the CDL has moved to Version 2 of UC-eLinks and has also begun pointing to Melvyl-T, rather than to legacy Melvyl, from UC-eLinks.  (Version 2 has changes to the administrative back-end module, is Unicode compliant, and has some other behind the scenes changes that users will not see.)  The decision to link to Melvyl-T at this time was made in consultation with the UC campus Heads of Public Service (HOPS), who wished to wait, in most cases, until the end of the semester or quarter before beginning to link to Melvyl-T.

From a journal article database, when users click on the UC-eLinks icon they will be directed to a message that says: “See if your campus has this. Select the Full Record on Melvyl-T”.

Melvyl-T is now a combined catalog for serial and non-serial (books, videos, etc.) records.  In order to make a match with the desired record from a database, Melvyl-T executes a Command search, going through the following search sequence: ISSN number (022), ISBN number (020), Journal title (wpe), and Book title (wmt).  This is the same process that was used to search in legacy Melvyl except that two separate databases were being searched, and there was no Command search.

If there are zero results in Melvyl-T, users will be thrown into a Command search box that shows, for example, the code for ISSN, 022=[number] and the message: “Your search retrieved zero items.  Try entering new terms or running your search in the keyword index.”

If you encounter problems or have questions, please use the “Report problems with UC-eLinks” link on the UC-eLinks pop-up window to report them.